


The Folly at Havensridge Hall

by thedevilchicken



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artistic Liberties with Regency Details, Blow Jobs, Costume Parties & Masquerades, First Time, Gardens & Gardening, Getting Together, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Minor Character Death, Moving On, Regency, Regency Romance, Stately Homes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25853740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Jack Rivers is a groundskeeper at Havensridge, the country seat of Viscount Lethton.Eight years ago, he met the viscount's grandson, Lucas, the rake who will not inherit the viscountcy. Jack has never forgotten him.Now, Lucas has returned to Havensridge to spend the summer with his ailing grandfather. What Jack wants more than anything is Lucas Lethton, but he knows he shouldn't take the risk.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character, Rake/Confused Gardener
Comments: 13
Kudos: 114
Collections: The Prince Regent's Birthday Regency/Victorian Flash Exchange





	The Folly at Havensridge Hall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Plaid_Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/gifts).



> Written for the potentially quite cracky relationship tag "Rake/Confused Gardener". The gardener here is very confused, and the rake is very rakish, but the lack of crack is hopefully forgivable!

The country seat of Robert, Viscount Lethton, was a sprawling estate in the Peaks by the name of Havensridge. 

House and grounds both had their designs from men of some renown and neither were short of visitors throughout the year; some wished to sketch the architecture, while others sought the breathtaking view from the hall's tall belltower, or the fine-scented roses, or the curious shrubs in the children's garden. The groundskeepers kept them trimmed to the shape of all manner of creatures: there were cats and mice and elephants amongst them, a small herd of deer and three flying ducks, and a great big Indian tiger with all its teeth bared fiercely. One of the undergardeners once hacked off half its foreleg in an unfortunate incident involving an intrepid crow and a pair of garden shears, but the general consensus was that the accidental amputation only added to its fearsome mien.

In the summer, once the Season was finished and the family returned from London, they opened up the grounds for the Lethton town fête, with a baking contest held in the shade of a bright white marquee, while guests hunted ribbons through the gardens and got lost in the head groundskeeper's prize hedge maze. Jack had spent hours tying coloured ribbons onto branches over the years, and sometimes they would still be finding them months later where the treasure-hunters' seeking fingers hadn't ventured. He kept a box of them in the folly's undercroft, the once-bright satin all faded and shabby, but they helped scare the birds from his small plot of vegetables once tied onto a stick or two. Sometimes he used them for the herb garden and the kitchen garden, too, when Mr. Evers had one of his turns and Jack was called on to assist. 

They all had their assignments, yes - the lawns or the pastures where the sheep grazed the grass down short, or the roses or the hanging baskets, or any of the hundred other things that an estate the size of Havensridge required - but it was Mr. Evers who had taken him on as an apprentice in the gardens all those years ago. Perhaps he didn't feel obliged to him, but he did feel a sense of fondness. After all, his own father had passed away not long before his mother had, and though he had a brother down in London, Jack felt rather like the old man was all the family he had remaining. 

There was a long path that wound up to the house, maybe half a mile or so through the woods off the road that led down into Lethton. On summer days, the dappled light that shone through the swaying trees that framed the view to Havensridge Hall was quite something to see. Jack liked it, at least, though that summer he hadn't had the time to paint it yet. He had a collection of them, one for each summer he's spent there since his unceremonious departure from St. Saviour's school; his mother had always liked to have them, and his new painting had gone up on the wall of the gatehouse cottage every summer just as soon as it was dry. He always liked how proud she looked when she hung them. No one else had ever looked at him like that.

Of course, once his parents were gone, he hadn't been able to stay in the gatehouse. He hadn't really wanted to, if he was honest about it; he had no need for the house's six good-sized bedrooms or the small set of servants' quarters that led back from the kitchen, or a drawing room with a pianoforte in it that he didn't play. There were fires they'd need to light and candles that they'd have to burn, and though his half of the generous inheritance he'd shared with his older brother was more than enough to keep a small household for the next twenty years or more, he'd never had designs on maintaining a household, or a wife, or children of his own. The viscount's new steward - one of his father's old friends, as it happened - inherited the place when he arrived, complete with servants in situ, and Jack was thinking about their old cook, Mrs. Meadows, who had just retired not three months since, as he was walking to the garden he was charged with keeping. She'd stayed on with Mr. Jenkins, the new steward, and he'd seen her regularly, on the first Tuesday of every month, when he'd put on his best coat and walked over for dinner. She lived in town now, with her widowed sister, and between them they'd probably sweep up all the baking prizes at the summer fête. He took his evening meals in the kitchens with the staff now, he had for years and it was always good, but he missed her cooking - the Jenkins' had a new cook, and the previous evening he'd tried her food for the third time, and it just couldn't hold a candle. Mrs. Jenkins had almost looked apologetic.

Seven years had passed since his parents' deaths, four months apart, and frankly it seemed almost like longer. He was twenty-nine years old, but he felt much older. And he was still thinking about Mrs. Meadows' upside-down cake when he noticed the garden gate was ajar. He pushed it open - the hinges were well oiled and didn't give away his presence - and he went inside. And there, within the secret garden, in the pool they kept for swimming in whenever the weather turned particularly warm, was someone else he hadn't seen in years. At least not close enough to be remarked on in return, and definitely not in that state of undress. 

Jack coughed. The swimmer stopped swimming and turned to him, treading water though the pool wasn't quite so deep that he needed to, then he took three easy strokes to the pool's stone border. He put his arms on it, one on top of the other, and rested his chin on top of them both. 

"Hello, Jack," the swimmer said. "I wasn't expecting company but I'll say, it's delightful to see you." 

Jack frowned down at him. "Is it?" he replied. 

The swimmer laughed. He had a good laugh, Jack thought, warm like the mid-morning June sun that was beating down overhead, and rich and easy. He had a good face, too, with honey-brown eyes and honey-gold hair, though for the moment his hair was soaked to a much more muted shade. He was a handsome man, and clearly most keenly aware of that fact, though Jack supposed he didn't feel surprised by that; Lucas Lethton had a reputation, after all, and it was not a particularly good one. 

As Jack watched, Lucas pushed himself up out of the pool and stood there, dripping and utterly naked, on the paved stone border that surrounded it. Where Jack's body was thick and strong from work, Lucas was slim and lithe and lightly chiseled as a marble statue, except very much without a token leaf to save his virtue. Of course, the water was cold enough that his skin was all gooseflesh and his manhood reduced to a rather unflattering wrinkle, and when Lucas glanced down at himself, and down between his thighs, he snorted in amusement. 

"You can blame that icy water for the unimpressive state of my prick," he said, and gave himself a rub like that might remedy the situation. It didn't, but it did make Jack's eyes go wide. It made his cheeks flush hot. He looked away, toward the little copper-roofed summerhouse with its verdigris and walls composed almost in their entirety of panes of glass no bigger than his hand. But he didn't look away so far that he couldn't see Lucas set his wet hands on his wet hips from the corner of his eye. 

"You don't remember me, do you," Lucas said. He clucked his tongue and ran both hands through his hair, and Jack's eye was drawn as he did so; all the muscles in his arms and chest drew taut and Jack's own chest felt a little tighter for it, too. Lucas smiled, though, widely, charmingly but just a little wolfish, as he kept on dripping. "I'm the black sheep, you know."

Jack rubbed his palms against his trousers. He shifted his weight and took a breath and let it out. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be anxious, but he was.

"I know who you are, Lucas," he said. "I might be slow but I don't usually forget things." 

Lucas' smile broadened into something very nearly spectacular. "I'm always glad to hear I left an impression," he said, then he gestured around the garden, apparently still entirely unperturbed by both his own nakedness and the awkward stance that Jack had unwittingly adopted. "Grandfather said this was where you work now. You keep it beautifully."

"Is that why you're here?"

"To see the garden?"

"For your grandfather."

"Ah." Lucas pressed his palms together over his damp chest, almost like a prayer, as his smile turned rueful. "Yes. Grandmama says grandfather is unlikely to last the summer so I'm here for the duration." He turned away then and frankly, Jack devoutly wished he hadn't. Sunlight glinted in the water on his lightly tanned skin - evidently he spent more time undressed while out of doors than might be considered proper - and served to highlight every curve and dimple. Jack felt a familiar bloom of shame in his chest when his cock stirred as he watched him. He'd have liked to have put his hands on him, dirty and calloused as they were from his work. He'd have liked to have put his mouth on him, bent his head to press his lips between his shoulderblades or knelt and found the indents in his lower back. There was a good curve to his arse and Jack bit his lip as he found himself imagining his dry palms on Lucas' damp cheeks and parting them to find his hole. From what he knew of Lucas Lethton, he might have liked to feel his tongue against his arsehole. He might have let him do it to him then and there on his knees by the pool with the garden gate still standing open. But, as inured to scandal as Lucas was, and however unsurprised his family might have been by it, Jack didn't want to be forced to leave Havensridge. 

"It really is a wonderful garden," Lucas said. He glanced back at Jack over one shoulder and then looked away again. He turned a slow circle, casting his gaze over the pool that Jack dredged every morning, rain or shine, sun or snow. He looked at the summerhouse with its charming age and obvious upkeep, the tall trees for shade and the wildflowers, the big brass sundial set into the ground would reach it best that Jack polished every afternoon. It was a quiet place, except for the birds and the middle-distance sound of running water from the stream outside the walls. It was Jack's favourite place in the entire estate, so full of colour, cared for but not curated so minutely as the roses or the shrubberies. 

Then Lucas turned back to him. He gestured at the towel that Jack had left to dry over the back of a nearby bench and Jack threw it to him. Lucas caught it easily and set about drying himself down on the mostly-dry weave.

"Do you swim often?" Lucas asked. 

"Every day, first thing after sunrise, unless there's something keeping me away." 

Lucas' mouth took a slight self-deprecating twist. "Frankly, I'm usually still in bed until eleven," he said. He shrugged. "But I suppose that will have to change, at least for the rest of the summer." Then he tilted his head. "Do you live in Lethton?" he asked, as he towelled his hair. 

"No," Jack replied. 

"Where, then?"

"You know the folly?" Jack said. "On the path through the woods towards the Rawlings' farm." 

Lucas frowned, just for a fleeting moment, and paused his rather less than thorough drying, though Jack couldn't say that he understood why. 

"Yes," Lucas replied. "I know the folly." He threw the towel back and started pulling on his underwear from the haphazard pile of clothing by the pool. "Shall I meet you there in the morning or come out here directly?"

The question took him by surprise, though fortunately Lucas was too busy dressing himself without the presence of his valet - a skill he'd evidently mastered, though Jack wouldn't have liked to have said why that was - to notice Jack's reaction. He couldn't say he'd expected Lucas Lethton, only child of Viscount Lethton's second son and indolent rake by all reputable accounts, to set his mind to an early-morning swim. But he threw the towel back over the bench to dry again and jabbed his short fingernails into his palms. 

"Well, I have to drag the water for leaves before anyone can swim," he said. 

"So, here would be best."

"Yes. Here would be best." 

Lucas smiled brightly. "Tomorrow, then."

Jack nodded tensely. "Tomorrow," he replied. 

Then Lucas left the garden, half-dressed and practically indecent with the rest of his clothes scooped up into his arms. He left the gate standing open and Jack, for his sins, watched him walk away as he stood there beside it. He still had that same confidence of bearing that he'd had all those years ago. He still had that golden sheen to his hair and, as he went, he turned back and waved. Jack couldn't make himself reciprocate. Instead, he closed the thick wooden gate and rested his forehead down against it. 

He dearly wished that Lucas Lethton had not returned to Havensridge. 

\---

When Jack had left the gatehouse following his parents' deaths, he'd expected he'd need to find a spot in town, or else find himself a new position where he might have lodgings on the grounds. As it happened, his lordship had another plan in mind: he gifted Jack the estate's old folly. 

The folly was a queer old place, he'd always thought - it was just one square room that stood on top of four thick stone arches with vaulting underneath like inside the local church, and crenellations around the top not entirely unlike the towers on a castle. Inside, the ceiling was vaulted, too, with thick ribs that stretched down almost to the stained glass windows' tops, painted in what might once have been a vibrant blue all picked out in golden stars. It had needed some work, but Jack had found he was glad of the distraction at the time. He'd fixed the leaky ceiling, all except for the trapdoor that led up to the mostly flat and poorly guttered roof, and sanded down the worn old parquet floor so he could put in a few repairs then give it a new coat of stain and varnish. He'd brought in a double bed - it felt like an extravagance but he didn't need much space beside that - and a few pieces of furniture to store what things he'd felt like keeping, which wasn't much. Then he'd put up boards between the arches to keep the weather out of the undercroft and he'd been quite happy there since. 

In bed that night, though, after seeing Lucas, after seeing _so much_ of Lucas, it wasn't the work that he thought of. It wasn't moving in, or any of the time he'd passed there, either. It was one night eight years ago, while he'd still been living in the gatehouse with his parents. It was a night he'd thought about more often than he'd ever really meant to, and so he lit the lamp again and got the letters out from the little box under his bed. 

Jack's father had been steward of his lordship's estate and his older brother had been educated with his lordship's grandchildren by his first son, boarding at St. Saviour's school. The same couldn't have been said for Jack, or at least not since the first two terms, after which he'd returned to Havensridge. He was able to read and write but sometimes letters didn't seem to mean very much to him and anyway, he held a firm belief that one Rivers man in the law was quite enough for king and country. He supposed they'd given him the apprenticeship on the estate from pity, at first, when he'd started following the groundskeepers as they worked during the day, and over the years he'd rolled lawns and weeded flowerbeds and snipped dead heads from the bushes in the rose garden. He'd learned about herbs from old Mr. Evers and how to transplant trees from one place to another, and a hundred odd jobs that made up the life of a gardener there on Viscount Lethton's estate. 

He'd never needed much in the way of written-down words for those things, at least. All he'd really needed them for was the letters, and he took them out of the small wooden box as he sat there on the bed that night. He knew what they said because he'd struggled through them so many, many times, sounding out the words when he was sure that there was no one there to hear him. He knew he should have burned them, from the moment he'd set eyes on them, but he'd been so intrigued when he'd found them there in the folly after Lucas had left Havensridge. After all, how could he have been otherwise? They might not have been meant for him - he supposed he knew who their intended recipient was, and it certainly wasn't Jack Rivers - but the name on the paper still said _Jack_.

He sat in bed and read the three short letters by the light of the candle in his lantern. His lips moved as he followed the words with one worn fingertip because although he knew the words almost by heart, he could still never quite believe them. He supposed there was a reason Lucas was considered such a charming man, and it wasn't just his the pleasing way in which all his features had found themselves arranged with relation to each other; he'd been reading Classics at King's at the time the letters were written, still just nineteen years old, and the way his words were weaved together in them was just as pleasing as he looked. Perhaps more so, for the promise in them, and the lust. 

He read the letters with a tight throat and a slowly thickening prick, entirely against his better judgement. Then he set them aside and he blew out the lamp and when he lay back, he already knew what would happen: he wrapped one hand around his cock and stroked himself with his eyes screwed shut. He'd done that so many times before over the years, thinking of Lucas and that summer, what he'd hoped for and what he'd seen. He sobbed out a groan against his own fist as he finished, and then he tried very hard to go to sleep. It was not at all an easy feat. 

And, in the morning, shortly after dawn, he went out to the garden. He saw Mr. Evers' lost cat on the way, darting across the east lawn after a wild rabbit, but he couldn't have caught it if he'd tried so he moved on. He brought two towels with him - he supposed that if what he remembered of the man held true, he'd neglect to bring his own, and he was proved right half an hour later, once the water was cleared of the overnight leaves, when Lucas arrived very much with no independent means of drying himself off. 

"Shall we?" Lucas asked, as he tried and failed to stifle a rather enormous yawn. 

Jack rested the end of the pole against the ground and leaned against it, with the dredging net dripping water from above, as if keeping it close would act as some form of protection against the thoroughly unwelcome allure of Lucas Lethton. 

" _We_?" he replied. 

Lucas tutted, then he started to remove his clothes. "Yes, Jack, _we_ ," he said. "It's not like any man needs the whole pool to himself and I rather thought _we_ was the point. Didn't you?"

Jack didn't say he wasn't sure what Lucas meant by that. He didn't say he wasn't interested in what he thought that Lucas meant by that. He didn't say no in any way, as it happened, though he supposed he ought to; he just looked at him, standing there pulling off all of his fine clothes, almost finer than the viscount's other family's things, though Jack supposed he understood that - after all, after Lucas' parents had died, he'd been brought up by his mother's parents, who happened to be his lordship the Earl of Dormerley. Lucas might have been a rake, but Jack could see how there might be less fun to it were one poor and a rake. Lucas, as it happened, was quite far from poor. 

"Let's just say you're keeping me company," Lucas said, as he unbuttoned the fall of his trousers and then undid them at the waist. He was bare underneath, obscenely so, with his manhood hanging out for all to see while he was still very much inside his shirt and wearing his fine leather boots. Not that there was any other soul to see him than Jack, of course, and Jack for his part was unsure if the obscenity of it was lessened or increased by Lucas taking off his boots and pulling off his stockings and, in short order, leaving himself naked and barefoot at the side of the pool. 

"Yes?" Lucas said. "No?" Then he turned and jumped straight into the pool and swore at the cold in such vivid and varied language that Jack could have sworn he was back at the Red Lion on a half-drunken evening and not starting the day with a man whose grandfather on one side was a viscount and on the other side an earl. He found himself smiling in spite of himself. 

He undressed. It was one of the poorer ideas he'd had in months, high in the list with letting young Dawson trim the hedgerow and that final glass of brandy after dinner with Mr. Jenkins when he'd known he'd wake up in the morning feeling rather like he'd been beaten about the head with his favourite spade. Still, he undressed as Lucas floated there in the pool, waiting, treading water, watching him, not even trying to pretend he wasn't, and every now and then as he pulled off his neckcloth and hopped about to take off his boots, he glanced down to see the open, avid, faintly teasing look on Lucas' handsome face. He tried to make believe it didn't bother him, being watched like that, but it did - Jack was conscious that he wasn't exactly an affront to the eyes himself, but he understood how different they were in looks as well as station. 

Where Lucas was fine-featured, gold-haired, of a pleasing height and lithely muscular physique, Jack was blunt, black-haired and towering, with a thickness of body and limb acquired through labour more than exercise. He had his mother's striking ice-blue eyes, the sort that caught people's attention, but he had such trouble with them from time to time - his mother had always said poor eyesight was the price she'd paid for her pretty eyes, but they'd been the reason that she and his father had met. Jack would have gladly swapped his for a pair the excited much less fascination but could make out letters at a distance greater than a foot or two, but he supposed what he had was what he had. Besides, if he'd actually cared, he'd have taken his spectacles for repair after the last time that he'd broken them - he'd been using one side more like a monocle for months. 

Lucas watched him undress, and Jack could almost feel his gaze on him, warm and languid as it took in arms and chest and hips and the trail of dark hair that led down over his abdomen straight to the base of his cock. Lucas bit his lip almost coquettishly as he smiled at him, and Jack scowled as he jumped into the pool. The water was cold, bracing, and above all the perfect antidote to the stirring he'd felt with Lucas' eyes on him. He couldn't have been more grateful for that fact if he'd tried to.

That gratitude persisted as they swam. They did so in merciful silence but unfortunately silence didn't keep Lucas from looking at him as they passed, or as they paused, or as they each pulled themselves back out of the water when they were done with their few bracing minutes of swimming. Jack retrieved the towels and handed one to Lucas and their fingers brushed just for a moment and when Jack shivered, entirely involuntarily, it would have been easy to blame it on the chill if Lucas hadn't smiled that knowing smile and let his gaze flick down between Jack's wet thighs. The cold kept him soft, though, even once they were relatively dry, once they were standing there in the garden with the heavy wooden gate closed to keep them clear of prying eyes, and Lucas threw his towel onto the bench. He stepped closer. Jack drew himself up tall. 

He'd have liked to have kissed him. Lucas had full lips with a hint of a smile that was playing at their corners, and the way his wet hair was raked back from his face gave him a hard edge that wasn't usually present, and Jack would have liked to have kissed him, crushed his mouth against his and fucking devoured him for all the nights he'd spent thinking about what he'd seen that night before he'd left and everything that had come before. He'd have liked to have reached one hand down between Lucas' still dripping wet thighs and warmed his cold-shrivelled cock until he stiffened and then knelt there on the ground in front of him, the awkwardness of knees on paving stones be damned. Once upon a time he'd seen the length and girth that Lucas' cock grew to when erect, and he could almost feel his skin against his palm and taste the salty tang as he eased back his foreskin to lap at the tip. He wanted it, and from the way that Lucas looked at him he was sure that he wanted it, too. But he stepped back. He reached for his clothes. 

"Tomorrow, then?" Lucas said, and there was an almost hopeful quality to his tone that made Jack's cock twitch in interest. 

He looked back over his shoulder as he pulled on his shirt and, just for a moment, he turned around like that, bare except for his shirt, with his rough fingertips hitching it up over his stomach. Lucas looked at him almost like the bare-toothed tiger shrub waiting to pounce. His cheeks looked faintly flushed though that could have been the chill and then the faint warmth in the summer air, but his gaze moved quickly downwards. 

"Tomorrow, then," Lucas said, with his eyes still fixed to Jack's soft cock, then he looked up and smiled. "Bright and early."

They dressed. They left. And Jack didn't see him again that day. That night, though, when he went to bed and closed his eyes, he definitely saw him; he tensed his jaw and clenched his teeth to keep from shouting out his name. 

\---

They met at the pool every morning for the next three days. And, every night afterwards, Jack couldn't get the way Lucas Lethton looked at him out of his poor besotted head. 

"You know," Lucas said, on the fourth day, "you don't have to go running off after your swim."

"Some of us have work to do," Jack replied, more harshly than he'd meant to, but Lucas just laughed as he followed him out of the pool. 

"I know," he said. "My father made a number of rather shrewd investments before his death and so here I am, the dissolute degenerate that you see before you." He set one damp hand on Jack's damp shoulder, bare skin on skin, leaned in and said, conspiratorial, "The truth is, I've never worked a day in my life." 

It was hardly the most attractive confession that Jack had ever heard, but the nearness of his voice beside his ear made him shiver despite that. Then he visited Mr. Evers and, at least for a short while, that took his mind off baser things. 

On the fifth day, the lost black cat sat down by the pool and started washing itself as the two of them swam and when Jack stopped, and said, "I know this sounds ridiculous but I need to catch that cat," Lucas gave him a somewhat skeptical look but joined him in the chase nonetheless. They raced about the garden like a pair of well-matched fools, wet and naked and far too slow to get their hands on George the famous mouser. 

Ultimately, they admitted defeat, and they stood there by the pool, slightly dirty of foot and short of breath, and once they'd splashed a little water to clean their soles back off again, they looked at each other. Lucas' chest was still heaving with his breath and his face was flushed and Jack found it all too easy to imagine other activities that might have a similar effect on him. Like Jack's mouth. Like Jack's fingers. Like Jack's cock. 

The month of June wore on and the heat did not decrease as it moved forward to July. Jack worked each day in the garden - there were tasks enough to keep him busy there, with a little slack time to help Mr. Evers teach his new apprentice all about the herbs that grew in the patch outside the kitchen window. Mr. Evers had taken tea with his mother once a week, on a Thursday afternoon, towards the end, and Jack knew there'd been herbs in the tea that helped her pain; he knew which ones, too, and he knew they were the ones his lordship took in his tea, too. The staff said he'd had a good innings, he'd been ninety years old in a week or two, but Jack didn't think that that was quite the point. 

He worked every day and he swam every day. He saw Lucas each morning, in the pool, looking at him very much as if he'd make an excellent new notch for his bedpost; sometimes he saw him at other times, too, from afar, across the gardens, on the terrace, with his cousins or his uncles or his grandmother. His lordship's eldest son was Lucas' uncle, and that son had sons, and those sons had sons; Lucas would never be Viscount Lefton, not that he'd seemed to be perturbed by that. 

On Sunday, Jack went to church just as he always did, with Mr. Evers and Lucy the dairy maid who was cook's niece, and several others who still kept the habit. They walked the half mile down the winding path to the gatehouse, and the half mile from the gatehouse to the church, and though his lordship had always used to walk with them over the years, he'd had to take the carriage. Lucas and his cousin Robert (son of Robert, son of Robert), and Robert's son Robert, walked with them instead, in the mid-morning sun, and though Jack stuck by Mr. Evers' side and talked a little to Lucy, who he suspected might have been a little sweet on him, he glanced at the family every now and then and Lucas looked back at him. He was by far the most handsome member of the Lethton family, taller than the rest and a little broader through the shoulders and where the others were the fair side of plain he was what anyone might have called attractive, and the girls on their way to church had evidently noticed. They giggled and tried not terribly hard to hide their stares and while he wasn't eyeing Jack, he was flashing them a wink. Honestly, if he hadn't already known that any and all involvement with Lucas Lethton was a terrible idea, that flirtation might have swayed him.

Lucas looked at him in church, turning back from the family pew to find him first and then when they stood to sing, Lucas took the opportunity to glance at him again. Jack had never had a strong belief in the Almighty, just the usual post-Sunday school level of acceptance of the presence of the church in his life, but even he wasn't sure that the thoughts in Lucas' head were fit for the nave at morning service. Once proceedings had come to their conclusion, however, and the rest of the Lethton family was performing its duties of politeness to the townspeople, Lucas slipped away and joined Jack on the walk back up to the house. 

"I have to admit it's been some time since I last set foot in church," Lucas said, as they were walking. "I'm not sure if I'm surprised or disappointed that the Lord Almighty didn't strike me down as I crossed the threshold."

"People don't tend to joke about that kind of thing here," Jack replied. He glanced at their companions, not too close by but close enough to hear. "Of course, we've no one here to challenge your prodigious reputation, Mr. Lethton."

Lucas frowned, more than likely at their abrupt departure from their Christian name basis; he glanced at Mr. Evers and the others, only some of whom were maintaining the polite fiction that they weren't diligently eavesdropping, and he evidently understood. 

"You know, it's really not as exciting as all that," he said. "I play cards from time to time and I like to dance. In fact, my grandmother has been planning a dance for my grandfather's birthday. He tells us there's no better medicine than seeing the younger generation have their fun." He paused, as they all did, as a farmer's cart passed across the road in front of them, and then resumed with his usual vigor, and Jack maintained his silence rather than admit that sounded like a recipe designed precisely to make a man feel his age plus perhaps another decade on the top. "He also says that he prefers to invite the good people of Lethton and whichever staff are not required for the event rather than house a gaggle of vultures from London hoping they're remembered in his will. I can only suppose I'm safe from that category as I have no interest in my grandfather's will, though I do have my doubts regarding the correct collective noun for scavenging birds."

Jack gave him a sideways look. Lucas smiled. He had a twinkle in his eye.

"So, will you come to the ball, Mr. Rivers?" he asked. 

"Is that an official invitation, Mr. Lethton?"

Lucas shrugged broadly. "I suppose so, yes. If grandmama changes her mind about the staff, you can come as my guest." 

Jack frowned. There was something about the exchange that didn't quite sit right with him, something very close to the borderline of mockery, and he'd have liked to have stalked away through the woods with the extent of speed at which his long legs would carry him. He supposed that wouldn't be proper, though, and he did at least have some semblance of manners for himself, even if Lucas chose to flaunt them. He did also suppose, of course, that a man of Lucas' wealth and position in society could well afford to flaunt whichever rules of decorum he chose to, with what would very likely be very little repercussion. 

There was something enticing, however, about the offer, even if he was at least part way to certain he was being teased. Lucas had always treated him as almost an equal, or at least not he was inherently beneath him, which was the case with many others that he'd met in life. Lucas had been good company, or least he had eight years ago when they'd first met for more than a glancing moment. But it wasn't as if he'd imagined being Lucas Lethton's friend for all those years and he had to admit that was part of the enticement: he didn't think that Lucas was looking for a friend. It was probably just his eyes he liked, however, or the promise of a bit of country rough before he returned to life in London. 

"I don't usually go in for that sort of thing," Jack said. "Green thumbs but two left feet." 

"Then it's lucky I dance well enough for both of us," Lucas replied. 

From that point, Jack found for each of his complaints, Lucas had a frustrating counterargument, and by the time they reached the gatehouse, all Jack had left to do was grudgingly agree. Then he broke off from the others with a wave and walked up through the woods back to the folly, blessedly free of his tormentor. Lucas was infuriatingly persuasive, but Jack did have just over a week to find himself a fresh excuse for absence. 

He changed out of his Sunday best and pottered in his garden until late afternoon, then took himself back into town. He wasn't sure he had friends there, or indeed anywhere, not in particular, but the Red Lion could always be relied upon for a steady supply of companions when matters turned to drink. He had always vowed he wouldn't drink alone and the fact he had to walk a mile to the public house in Lethton could usually be relied upon to dampen his enthusiasm for alcohol, but he persuaded himself the walk alone would do him more good than lingering in Lucas' so charming orbit. It took no time at all on walking through the door for him to find a willing partner or two and they drank into the night, until they sang a bawdy song or two and then said goodnight before Mr. Davies the farmer had his wife to answer to. Jack liked Mrs. Davies - she was a good friend of Mrs. Meadows, of whom he was extremely fond - so he delivered the inebriated Mr. Davies to his door before he slipped back off toward the hall. 

He walked slowly, not because he found himself particularly reluctant to return or because his own state of inebriation was quite as advanced as his companions' were, but because it was a beautiful summer night. The stars were out, or at least they were when he could see them through the trees overhead, and he knew the sounds in the woods where he was walking were just animals he tried not to disturb. Every now and then he heard the hoot of an owl and another one to answer it and he paused as he came out into the clearing where the folly stood. It was really quite a building - like a castle tower in miniature, pretty in its own way though it did rather seem to call out for a suitably sized moat and drawbridge to match the architect's design. Rumour had it, in the way that small town rumours always did, that the first Viscount Lethton - or possibly the second - had built the folly for his mistress, or to hide away an eligible daughter from men's prying eyes, but it struck Jack that the tower was far too low for _let down your hair_. Like as not, it had been built as a playhouse. Of course, Lucas had used it for a rather less childish type of play.

As he came to the door into the undercroft, which led to the door to the spiral stair into the folly's single room, Jack noticed it was open. As he stepped inside, he could see a light shining down the stairs. He really didn't have very much at hand worth stealing, so he couldn't say that worried him, but he picked a knife up from the workbench in the undercroft and made his way up the stairs inside. He had no intent to kill a man, he thought, but he might scare one off with his height and the glint of a blade in his hand. However, when he came into the room, he groaned out loud and set the knife down. Lucas was lying on his bed. 

"Honestly, I thought you were never coming back," Lucas said, without sitting up. He was positioned as if he'd sat down on the edge of the mattress, feet on the floor, then slumped backwards with all the finesse of a waterlogged cat. Then he sighed with all the melodrama he possessed - it was not an inconsiderable quantity - and hefted himself back up to a seated position. "Where were you?"

"Is that any of your business?"

"No, but that doesn't appear to have prevented my asking." 

Jack leaned against the wall by the door into the stairwell and looked at Lucas sideways. His hair was out of place from his irreverent sprawl and his waistcoat had ridden up, and he didn't seem in any great hurry to put those things to rights, which reminded Jack a great deal of the last time that he'd seen him there. Of course, there hadn't been a bed there then, or furniture beyond a couple of half-rotten chairs, and the paint had been flaking damply from the ceiling. By then, Jack had restored the paint, complete with gold leaf stars, from a small portion of the money that his parents had left him. It looked a much more fitting place for a gentleman now than it had then. 

When Jack didn't reply, Lucas pushed himself up from the bed and walked toward him. He set one hand on the wall by Jack's shoulder and leaned in close; he sniffed and he chuckled and when he pulled back he wagged one finger on his free hand scoldingly. 

"You've been drinking," he said, without moving back. "On a Sunday, no less. That doesn't seem very Christian to me, Jack."

Jack shrugged against the wall. "Then I'm not very Christian, I suppose," he replied. Then he narrowed his eyes at him just slightly, even as his pulse began to quicken. "What are you doing here, Lucas?"

"Well, now, that's a funny story," Lucas said. He shifted a fraction, just far enough so he could run the tip of his formerly wagging finger down the centre of Jack's chest. "And you should lock your door. Anyone could get in."

"I think _anyone_ did."

Lucas tutted. He hooked his finger between two buttons in Jack's waistcoat and tugged there just a little. 

"I couldn't sleep."

"That's not a funny story."

"You're terribly impatient, Jack. I wasn't done." Lucas began walking his fingers back up, slowly. "I couldn't sleep. And I was lying there in bed and I'm sorry to say the thing that popped into my head time and again was you. I tried...well, let's call them various methods of distraction, but nothing worked. So here I am, looking for you."

Jack swallowed. His chest felt rather tight as Lucas spread his palm over his sternum. 

"That's still not a funny story," he said. 

Lucas smiled wryly. "It seems hilarious to me," he replied. "Please imagine my frustration that my own right hand has proved ineffective." He sighed again, just as melodramatically, and let his forehead fall down against Jack's shoulder with the grace and delicacy of a headbutt. "You're just going to have to take pity on me."

He couldn't say he wasn't tempted, because he was exceedingly so: the object of his desires of those past eight years or so, almost to the day, had walked into his home and propositioned him, if not in so many words. Of course, in bed at night when he'd imagined how things between them might progress should they ever have the chance again, he hadn't conjured the notion that, to Lucas, sex between them might simply be a moderately acceptable alternative to manual stimulation. He asked himself if that mattered, and the answer returned from the depths of his ale-fogged mind that frankly, he couldn't be entirely sure. That may have been the reason why, when Lucas leaned up to press his mouth to his, Jack's heart just wasn't in it. Other parts of him, perhaps, but despite internal screams of protest he could not let those parts win out. 

Lucas' mouth was soft and firm at the precise same instant, and his fingers as they slipped to the back of Jack's neck were smooth and sure and welcoming. His body was solid but not unyielding and Jack caught himself considering just how _yielding_ it might be, caught himself considering stripping Lucas down and having him without further discussion, before he brought his hands up and leased him back by both his shoulders. 

"I've had too much to drink," Jack said, by way of explanation, though he knew it sounded weak. And Lucas raised both eyebrows pointedly as he tapped Jack's clothed crotch with the back of one hand. 

"It doesn't feel like you've had too much to drink," he replied, which Jack couldn't deny; he had the firm beginnings of an erection there under the cloth, that much was obvious. 

"Then perhaps I'm tired."

"You don't look tired."

"Then perhaps this is just that one rare moment when someone tells you no."

Lucas frowned. The light in the room was low and he'd stepped back another three feet or so, and Jack's poor eyesight made reading his expression harder than he'd have preferred it. 

"Are you telling me no, Jack?" Lucas asked. 

Jack winced. And the issue was that although he knew he should, and although he knew he should want to, he couldn't make himself say, _Yes, I'm telling you no._ He wouldn't have meant it because the only thing he wanted in that moment was to take hold of the front of Lucas' well-tailored coat and pull him in against him till their mouths met again. He'd wanted that and so much more besides for years. So, because he couldn't tell him _no_ , he told him nothing; he leaned against the wall and held his tongue, with both hands tucked behind his back so that he couldn't touch. 

"You know, you really are infuriating," Lucas said, at last, with a thoroughly exasperated shake of his head. "I'll see you in the morning, Jack. Frankly, I wish you a hangover the size of Gibraltar."

Then he swept from the room with all his usual vim, and didn't close the doors behind him. Jack closed them, wearily, with a little too much vim of his own, and then stripped and went to bed. 

Of course, his bed was where he knew Lucas had until recently been lying. He couldn't help it; he stretched out there, face down, cock hard, and he rocked his hips against the sheets. When he came, frustrated, almost angry though unsure if that anger was for Lucas or himself, he wished Lucas hadn't left. When he came, his fingers so tight around handfuls of the sheet that they almost tore straight through, he realised that Lucas' reputation didn't matter: he wanted him. 

The only issue was he knew it might be far too late already.

\---

In the morning, he dredged the leaves from the pool just as normal. He stripped down to his bare skin just as normal. He hopped down into the water and let the shock of the chill melt away into that odd, familiar sense of warmth. Then he ducked his head under to wet his hair and when he re-emerged, Lucas was coming through the gate. He almost hadn't expected to see him there again.He wasn't sure if his presence was a good sign or a purely neutral one. 

They swam. They glanced at each other as they did so, just as normal, though the feeling of it was different, or at least it was for Jack. His pulse felt quicker, almost anxious, jittery, but he couldn't find the words to come out and explain. So, at length, he pulled himself out of the pool and Lucas followed shortly after. They dried themselves on Jack's not exactly gloriously well-kept towels with their fraying edges and then reached for their clothes. 

But Lucas cleared his throat. Jack turned around to look at him, still naked. 

"About last night," Lucas said, with a somewhat downtrodden look on his face. "Look, Jack. If you're not interested..."

And, just as always, he should have said no, or he could have said nothing, and when Lucas made to step away and retrieve his clothes he could have let him do so. But there was a twisting in his gut that told him no, this time he couldn't; he caught Lucas' wrist. He felt his cheeks turn hot. And he told him, "No. I'm interested." 

Lucas' face lit up with a smile so bright that Jack was half convinced it almost caused some new type of solar eclipse, then he leaned up and pressed his mouth to Jack's. It didn't last, though; it was like Lucas couldn't decided what he wanted to do first, his hands and his mouth flitting this way and that, over Jack's collarbones and his hips and the curve of his arse, pinching a nipple then raking back through his hair. Then, abruptly, with no forewarning at all, Lucas dropped to his knees there on the well-rolled lawn and pressed his mouth to the base of Jack's cock. He wrapped one hand around it and he looked up at him, his face flushed and his eyes blazing, and he touched the tip of his tongue to the tip of him. Jack's breath hitched and he clenched his fists and he watched as Lucas stroked him, as Lucas coaxed his chilly manhood to erection, then eased back his foreskin from the thick, flushed tip and pressed his lips there. Jack's balls throbbed. His palms stung from where his nails pressed tight against them. And he watched as Lucas slowly took his shaft into his mouth. 

He sucked him. He knelt there on the grass in the infrequently-used walled garden that nestled there behind a copse of trees and a covert of well-tended scrub where rabbits sometimes liked to hide. People knew it was there, of course, but it was so very much the demesne of Jack Rivers that few of the estate staff went there and the family preferred the sunny terrace by the house or the pavilion by the lake. Still, the truth was that anyone could have found them there, with the gate wide open as Lucas always seemed to leave it, with Lucas on his knees with Jack's cock in his mouth and Jack wasn't sure if the panic of it made the feeling of it worse or better. His head reeled, and he ran his fingers into Lucas' wet hair, and Lucas looked up, his mouth full, somehow smiling around the girth of him. He tongued his tip and Jack could feel his insides tightening, he could feel his hips shifting just a little of their own accord, and he clenched his teeth to keep from groaning. He had only moderate success. 

"Lucas..." he said, like a warning, but Lucas evidently did not take it that way. Perhaps it was the way his voice sounded - it was high and tight to Jack's own ears, strained, breathy, and it only seemed to serve to spur Lucas on. He wrapped his free hand around Jack's balls and squeezed there, lightly, ran his fingertips behind them and pressed, rubbed there in a circle over the smooth stretch of skin that led back to his arsehole, and that was the very limit of what Jack's overwrought body could endure: his hips stuttered forward in a thoroughly disorderly rhythm and he very nearly yelped as he finished in Lucas' mouth. 

Lucas sucked him through it, as Jack's heart thumped inside his chest like he'd just run home from church. Lucas sucked him and then pulled back, and he spat into the herbaceous border, which frankly Jack wasn't sure was good for the plants. Then he stood, and he brushed a few stray blades of grass from his knees, and _then_ he looked at Jack. 

"Don't look so concerned," he said, as he started dressing. "Didn't you enjoy it?"

And he had, but he found it difficult beyond belief to tell him so. 

In the morning, they met at the pond again. They swam again. Lucas went down on his knees again. Then the following day, Then the day after that.

"This is a much more appealing way to wake up in the morning," Lucas said on the fifth morning, still on his knees in front of him, as he wiped his mouth on the frayed edge of a towel. "I'm used to two hard boiled eggs and a hair of the dog, not a quick bracing swim and a prick in my mouth."

Jack made an awkward face. "Do you like that?" he asked. He gestured at his own softening cock. " _That_ , I mean."

Lucas laughed. He rocked back onto his feet and pushed back upright and once he got there, he wrapped one hand around Jack's cock and slipped the other one up to the back of his neck. 

"I like yours," he said, as he stroked his nape while he held his manhood. "One of these days, I'm going to want it in me."

And Jack blushed - he felt it, the heat in his cheeks like he'd sat too long in the sun - but Lucas had already turned away to find his clothes. Jack, though, still had that thought inside his head when he went to bed that night. 

The next morning, they were there again - Lucas kissed his mouth then sucked his cock, and Jack understood he would have liked so much more of both. Then the next day, they were there again - they swam, as usual, but then the heavens opened, and while yes, there were swimming in a chilly outdoor pool and the additional water from the heavens wouldn't dampen them much further, but the heavy droplets hit the pool and splashed till swimming was impossible. 

They climbed out and grabbed their clothes and hurried to the summerhouse, and once inside they stood there dripping as the hard rain drummed against the windows. The damned lost cat zipped out as they entered and Jack swore colourfully after it but then Lucas pulled him to him, took his clothes and threw them down onto the bench and kissed him. Jack shivered, and it wasn't just the chill. He shivered because Lucas' wet hands were gliding all the way down his wet back to the curve of his arse, where he squeezed and pulled him closer still, until his cock pressed half-hard against Jack's hip. 

For once, Lucas didn't speak. He just looked at him for one unreadable moment and then turned to face the small panes of the summerhouse's glass, and he pressed one palm each to the centre of two windows. He leaned lower, forearms to the glass then, and he glanced back at Jack. He gestured him closer, up against his back, his skin damp and chilly but with a warmth beginning to bloom inside. And when Lucas reached back with one hand and mimed to him, slipping two fingers in between his thighs with a quirk of one brow, he understood. He leaned in, pressed one hand to the glass by Lucas' arm, and with the other he pressed his manhood in between Lucas' wet thighs. 

Lucas made a sound in his throat, guttural and full of pleasure, as the tip of Jack's erection slid up to nudge his balls. He tensed his thighs and held them tight, crossed one calf over the other shin to keep them tighter, and Jack dropped his forehead down against the back of Lucas' shoulder. He rocked his hips and his cock dragged against Lucas' heating skin and and he groaned there, the sound so loud in the small summerhouse even over the beating of the rain. And Lucas pushed back, slowly, starting to meet his thrusts, until Jack's cock hit his balls with every stroke and Lucas seemed entirely unable to help himself - he wrapped one hand around his own erection and began to stroke. Jack could hear his breath, loud and hitching, could feel the strain in his thighs and his back and damn, he ran one hand down over Lucas' chest, over his abdomen, and wrapped his own fingers over his. He let him show him how to do it as he thrust against him, the tension, the action, the swipe of his thumb over the head to spread the moisture there. He pressed his mouth to Lucas' shoulderblade and felt him tense up even further, even harder, felt him trembling against him, until all at once that tension released in great spurts across the summerhouse windows. And, dimly, as Jack's jaw clenched and his come painted the back of Lucas' balls, and dripped against his thighs, he realised he wasn't even sure if Lucas had finished any of the times he'd sucked him. 

The rain didn't last much longer after that, but they waited out the rain together once they'd dressed. Jack used his towel to wipe down the windows while Lucas used his to clean his thighs. And then the sun came out, glorious, sunbeams dancing in every drop of fallen rain, and Lucas stood and said, "I'm afraid I'm due in town." 

"Town?" Jack replied. "I didn't think there was much for you in Lethton."

Lucas' mouth twisted. "There really isn't," he said. "By town I mean London. Grandmama has her heart set on a new cravat for grandfather to match her dress, and I've a few errands of my own to run. Orders to retrieve." 

Jack frowned. "Will you be long?" he asked. 

Lucas paused, then he moved back in closer. He ran his fingers over Jack's only towel-dry hair as he sat there on the bench and then patted his cheek and stepped away again. 

"A few days," he said. "Don't fret, Jack, I'll be back. We're planning a party, of course I'll be back." 

Then he opened the summerhouse door and left him there. And frankly, Jack didn't feel particularly soothed by what he'd said: everything he knew about the rake of man Lucas was said that he would be wherever there were parties, and not just his grandfather's ninetieth birthday. 

While Lucas was away, Jack's morning swim seemed remarkably dull. While he was away, there was no spotting him as he crossed the lawn or sitting on the terrace taking tea with his uncle, or riding a horse with his aunt, or playing games with his cousins' young sons. Four generations of the Lethton family lived there at Havensridge, with a line of heirs all confusingly named Robert and, almost more confusingly, two wives named Catherine. Their names made it all the clearer that Lucas was only on the fringes of belonging there: his father had been Edward Lethton, not yet another Robert, and he'd been named Lucas for his mother's family's side. For Jack's part, he'd been christened John but his father was John, too, and so they'd called him Jack. And, for his part, he knew who he was; there'd be no wife to share the folly with, and no children to come after. His brother had two sons and a newborn daughter he was yet to see; he looked forward to his next visit, and he was content with that. After all, he had the Jenkins boys keep him on his toes. Lucas, though, was a gentleman of twenty-seven years and in relatively good standing, in wealth if not in reputation. Jack knew it came as a surprise to some that he hadn't chosen to marry yet. He wondered if he soon would. 

While Lucas was away, Jack swam and worked and sometimes he sketched. He still hadn't made time for the annual painting and he felt a small degree of guilt for that, but he found himself sitting on the folly's flattish roof or sprawled on his bed or in the garden's summerhouse and sketching things from memory. Jack rarely spent much more than his pay from the estate was worth in any given month, but sometimes he purchased paper and he used more of it in those three days that Lucas was away than he had in the three months preceding. He used charcoals that he'd burnt down himself and didn't mind too much about the mess it made of both his hands. And he drew, sometimes for an hour or more though it took him later in the night than he'd have liked. He drew the damned lost mouser, and the garden, shrubbery sculptures at which some of the other groundskeepers excelled and, sometimes, he drew the blueprints of. He drew the house and the swans on the lake and he drew Lucas. He drew his hands and his face and his damned naked body, his smile and his thick, hard cock. He missed him. That much was evident. 

Most of the sketches he burned once he was finished; he couldn't let anyone else see them, though he supposed Lucas' reputation would come through the indignity more or less intact. He went to church and he dined with the Jenkinses and their two boisterous boys, and he tried to feign a smile to rather ill effect. He honestly couldn't say that he felt sure of Lucas' return at all, and when he walked back to the folly from the gatehouse, his old home to his newer one, he told himself he'd weathered greater storms than this. He had his work, and his brother, Mr. Evers and the lads at the Red Lion, and the golden stars above his bed. It was enough for him. It truly was. 

But then, on the fourth night, the night of the party up at the hall, Jack returned to the folly to find the doors open. Lucas, however, was not inside: there was a box on Jack's bed in place of him, with a note on top that bore Jack's name. He had no need to fumble his way through it - all it said on the page when he unfolded it was _wear this_ \- but the handwriting was the same as the letters he'd kept. He put it with them, in the box under his bed, then opened the box that Lucas had left behind. 

He laughed. Then he did as he was told. 

\---

All of the staff were invited to toast his lordship's health, such as it was, once the masquerade was underway. 

The masks had been the countess' idea, apparently, symbolic of the mingling of men and women from both above and below stairs as equals for the night, and though Jack thought it was a pleasant sentiment it was hardly _equal_ ; the servants had masks they'd made themselves, or bought for a good deal more of their earnings than they might otherwise have spent, and could not compare with the family's or some of the more wealthy townsfolk who'd been invited up from Lethton. They were in fine fettle, though, dancing in the ballroom with a vigor Jack would have wagered rarely seen there, and clapping along with the rather talented band. Jack found himself tapping his foot to the tune more than once himself. 

When Lucas arrived, Jack knew it was him in an instant, and not purely because their masks were a perfect match one for the other: Jack wore a silver moon and Lucas a bright gold sun with curling beams, but he couldn't have been mistaken for anybody else. Even with his eyes the way they were, remarkable but ever-failing of faculty, he could tell him by the swagger to his step and the size and shape of him, the tilt of his head and how he swayed through the gathered throng, a full glass in each hand, with evidently practiced precision. Jack doubted that he'd spilled a drop. 

Lucas didn't speak when he passed him the wine, and Jack wasn't sure what to say to him, either. He hadn't wanted him to go and he was pleased that he'd returned but saying _I'm glad you're here_ seemed to be a step too far. His throat felt tight, though, and he turned away to lift his mask just far enough to swallow down the glass of wine in one long gulp as if that might ease it somewhat. It didn't, as it happened, but when he turned back around to Lucas he saw him putting down his own empty glass and wondered if he'd felt the same. He'd have liked to think so. 

When Lucas headed for the door to the terrace outside, Jack wasn't sure if he should follow, at least not until Lucas turned back and gestured with one gloved hand for him to do precisely that. They went out, as the music played on, as the dancers danced, and Jack followed further, to the far side of a trellis covered in fragrant climbing roses. Lucas held out one hand, still in its white glove, and Jack frowned at it just for a moment before he understood. As the music played inside, Jack took his hand and swept him closer. And perhaps he hadn't lied - he did have two green thumbs but two left feet - but that didn't seem to matter. They leaned close, and then closer, until their sun and moon clacked against each other, swaying with the music with one of Lucas' hands pressed flat and firm to the small of Jack's tense back. It wasn't much like any dance Jack knew, and perhaps wasn't even dancing, but he found he didn't mind. He'd never danced with a man, after all. He'd never even thought he might want to. 

Inside, the dance came to a close with a whoop and a clap of the guests' appreciation before another one began, but outside they didn't dance what was called inside. Lucas swept him into a waltz, spinning, turning, a whirl of indoor light and the dark outside flashing in his eyes - Jack had done it once or twice, rather scandalously, with some of the less scrupulously moral girls from town, but Lucas led and he was a rather wonderful dancer. They were so close together, Lucas clasping him by the waist in an entirely improper way and Jack's head began to spin so he pulled away but Lucas followed, Lucas took his hand, Lucas tugged and then led him away from the light and the laughter and music and down the path toward the woods. Jack went with him. He knew where they were going, and there was moonlight enough in the clear night sky to light the way. 

Inside the folly, Lucas took off his fine clothes and laid them over the backs of Jack's rather worn chairs. He didn't light the lamp; there was enough moonlight through the tall leaded windows with their eclectically coloured glass that they could see each other, albeit in jigsaw shades of red and blue and gold. The light shone off their masks and they kept them on, both of them, when Jack took off his clothes to match him, bare-skinned in the room. Then they lay down, and Lucas pressed him down, pressed him back against the mattress and then straddled his thighs. 

When Lucas oiled Jack's cock, he still felt dizzy from the party's heat and wine and dancing, and the feel of his long fingers slicking him. When Lucas shifted to straddle his hips, Jack's head was reeling with what he'd said there in the garden, once: _One of these days, I'm going to want it in me._ Lucas stroked him, slowly, making him fill up stiff, making his breath quick and his heart throb hard, and Jack understood what he intended. He'd never done that, not with anyone - he'd known older boys at school who did it, knew a couple of the undergardeners had been caught at it, but he'd never done it personally, perhaps because he'd never had the chance or perhaps for other reasons, like the letters underneath his bed. But then Lucas gripped him in his hand and ran his tip between his cheeks and pushed him up against his hole. Lucas straightened his back and he settled down. And Jack gasped out loud as he felt the muscle give just far enough for his tip to press inside. 

Lucas didn't stop there. He kept going, shifting down, inexorable as his hole began to stretch to take him. Jack had used his fingers sometimes, face down on the bed with oil spread on his fingertips, and he understood the tightness, understood the intent it took for Lucas to take his cock like that. Jack could see his thighs were tense and he gripped white-knuckled at his own knee as he took him even deeper, but Lucas' cock was jutting up between his thighs, flushed and leaking at the head. Jack reached out to touch and when he did, Lucas almost doubled over at the feel of it and clenched tight around his cock. He moaned, in surprise, in pleasure, then took Jack's hand and led it back there. As Jack's hand closed around him, Lucas began to move. 

There wasn't much to it: Jack laid there with his heels braced hard against the bed and Lucas rode him, almost like his practice in the saddle had helped him in this, too, or else perhaps his other experience in those areas was what counted. He rode him, his hole tight, his body taut, and Jack gripped his hip with his free hand and held his cock firm with the other. Lucas thrust against Jack's hand; he drizzled oil across his palm and rutted against it as he moved his hips to fuck himself on Jack's big cock. And honestly, Jack could say that this was nothing like he had expected. It wasn't the beautiful thing that he'd had in his head, the perfect thing, barely more notion than reality; it was hot, the heat of the night and the fact of their exertion making sweat stand out over their skin and their breath was harsh, the bed creaked, and the pleasure of it...it wasn't some pure thing, some pristine thing, but raw and blunt and clawing, making his muscles pull so tight they almost hurt, and then they did. It wasn't perfect, no, not like the vague images he'd conjured when he thought about what it might be - it was dizzying, and breathless, tight and hard and dirty when Lucas came in long, thick stripes across his abdomen. He didn't care, though; it actually made it better. He pushed up, teeth bared, hands tight at Lucas' hips, and he spilled himself inside him in a rush so sudden that it pulled his thighs and made his vision swim. 

Slowly, they caught their breath. Slowly, Lucas pulled back and let Jack's cock slip out from inside him. Then he left the bed, and he dressed while Jack lay watching him. 

Lucas didn't speak: he just left him there. Frankly, Jack wasn't sure which words he could have said to make what they'd just done any better, or any worse; if he'd been lost before then he had no idea what he was now. He had no word for it in any language. 

Then, in the morning, he went to the pond. He removed the fallen leaves and he stripped and he stepped in, and a few minutes later, Lucas joined him. As they swam, Lucas winked at him, and something inside Jack turned sick. He'd watched him wink at so many girls on the way to church and home again, and that was just in Lethton; he couldn't stand to think how many women, or how many men, he'd flashed that charming smile and taken to his bed. The gossips said they almost were without number, and Jack Rivers was now just another notch. 

He stopped swimming. He pulled himself out and when Lucas frowned up at him and asked, "What's wrong?" all Jack could do was towel himself quickly while he said, "I can't do this, Lucas. This isn't what I want."

"I don't understand," Lucas said. He got out of the pool and he stood there, almost fighting him, attempting to wrest his clothes from him; Jack's shirt tore and he scowled and pulled it on over his head anyway, and Lucas asked again, and _again_ , Lucas asked him what was happening, slapped him straight across the face when he didn't answer him then punched him in the jaw. Jack had never been a small man - he'd been a large boy and grown quickly to the point where he hadn't seen a man his height in quite some time - but Lucas wasn't a small man, either, and, naked or not, his weight was behind his fist. Jack bit his tongue and spat blood onto the grass as his ears rang. Then he laughed in spite of everything, in spite of himself, a bitter sound, and kissed Lucas on the mouth just one last time, he thought. He left him there, and Lucas didn't follow. 

It was hot that day, unreasonably so, and the family came down into the garden with their bathing suits and lemonade and a canopy with a blanket they could sit on to eat a picnic lunch. Jack was there, just in case of an emergency, as they knew that he could swim, but he'd rather have been anywhere from locked up in the butler's pantry to stranded on some tall ship lost at sea. Lucas didn't look at him; he swam a few lengths and then dried off lying on a blanket in the sun while his lordship sat in the shade and smiled to himself. He'd been looking drawn for months, and now he looked frail, but he looked content; he had his family with him, four generations from himself down to his great-grandsons, and Jack really couldn't help but wish him well. As they left, in fact, as the sun began to hang a little lower in the sky, Jack took a moment to shake his lordship's hand. He understood it might be the last time; his lordship seemed to know it, too, but was unafraid. Jack wondered, for himself, if he'd ever been so unafraid a single day in his life. When he watched Lucas returning to the house and felt his chest ache deep inside, he knew he hadn't. 

He spent the evening in town, drinking with Mr. Davies and a band of other merry half-drunks, as if that might help him in some way, but he really couldn't have called it a success. He'd spent so long desiring Lucas Lethton more than any other thing he'd seen in the wide world that knowing that he'd let him go was galling in the utmost, and he was unsure in what way it was that he might now move forward. It would be hard to see Lucas return to Havenridge as he did sometimes, for birthdays and sundry celebrations, a night or two on the way to some other venue where he'd likely play cards or play seducer - as they drank, and he feigned a brand of drunken happiness, he wondered if he might be better served by leaving for a fresh start elsewhere. He was skilled, after all, and strong, so he'd always find a use. 

He walked Mr. Davies home once the night drew to its conclusion, and then he walked back to the folly, through the woods. The view from the gatehouse up to the house, through the trees that framed the road, was quite a thing even at night, with the reflection of the hall on the lake in the moonlight, and he thought perhaps he'd paint it that way, just once, before he moved away, like an ending to the thing. He was still thinking of that, of the paints that he'd need, where his brushes were and if he'd need to find some fresh ones, when he came up to the folly and, on his arrival, found the doors ajar. That could only mean one thing, he knew, so he steeled himself as best he could and went inside. 

When he reached the top of the stairs, Lucas was sitting on his bed but his expression wasn't playful and Jack's chest clenched up tight. He had the box there, open on the mattress in front of him. He had the letters unfolded and sitting on the sheets. He had Jack's sketches of him, charcoals on the page that showed him there in every splendid detail - kneeling, back turned, beautiful, precisely the way Jack saw him. And one other sketch sat there, unfolded from the bottom of the box, him again but something different. 

"I don't understand," Lucas said, but Jack wasn't sure what there was to understand about it: he'd kept three letters that unequivocally did not belong to him, and their sender had now found them. He should have burned them long ago; now they were burning him. 

"I'm sorry," Jack said, with a taste in his mouth like ale and bile, bitter, but he knew he deserved it. "I know that they weren't mine to keep." 

He turned and fled, like an utter coward. And perhaps Lucas might have followed but he couldn't have known it if he had - Jack knew the woods, and he ran as if for his life. 

He went to the garden. He supposed it might be nearing the last time he'd see it. 

\---

Jack woke up in the half-light in the hours before dawn with the lost black mouser curled up purring on his chest. He scooped him up, finding George the cat more docile then than he'd ever known him, then scooped up his own jacket that had spent the night pressed to service as a pillow, and made his way to the house. Mr. Evers would want the cat returned, after all, so it wasn't as if he was simply avoiding the inevitable. It wasn't as if he was avoiding the possibility of Lucas coming to the pond for their daily morning swim. 

"His lordship died in the night," Mr. Evers told him, as he took the purring cat from Jack. "Peaceful, they said. Been a long time coming."

Jack nodded, and attempted to brush cat hair off his shirt without much success. He'd miss the viscount - his son was a good man but without quite his father's character. But, he thought, all things must end. Sooner or later, everything did. 

When he returned to the folly, he packed away the letters and the sketches; he knew he should burn them, and he told himself he would, but the whole affair still felt too raw for him to put such grim finality to it. Lucas wasn't there, of course - he'd be back at the house with his family, mourning, though the bed was so tousled that it seemed very like he might have slept there. Jack straightened the sheets as if doing so erased him from the folly in his entirety, but then he sat down there heavily, like his feet just wouldn't carry him. He put his head down in his hands and wondered if attempting to hold back his approaching tears was worth the effort. Precious little seemed to be.

If he'd wanted to erase Lucas, of course, he would have had to have done much more than make the bed. He'd have needed to have burned the letters, for a start, and his sketches with them, and then burned down the folly into ashes because the place itself reminded him of Lucas more than any other thing. It wasn't simply the newer memories, the fresher ones, masks that were still sitting on the table and a forgotten cravat that definitely wasn't anything that Jack had ever owned, but older ones, years older, from before. They'd stayed with him, and he was unsure those memories could be purged at all. 

Every year since he'd returned from St. Saviour's, where he'd left his brother to his sparkling education, Jack had painted the view up to Havensridge from the path outside the gatehouse. It was there where he was sitting, brush in hand, twenty-one years old, when Lucas had found him for the first time, painting, and had stopped with him to watch. He hadn't minded, as it happened - Lucas had always been so easy to talk to, right from the off, sitting there on the grass verge by the road as if he didn't care what a grass-stained mess became of his expensive clothes, though whether that was due to his having many more or just a deep belief in the skills of his staff was debatable. 

He sent his valet on to the hall with his things and stayed there, all afternoon, talking, smiling, before he said, "By the way, I suppose I ought to introduce myself. I'm Lucas Lethton. And you are?"

"Jack Rivers."

"My grandfather's steward's son?" 

"The younger one, at least."

"Well, Jack, I'm pleased to meet you." 

And he'd sounded so genuine that Jack hadn't been able to resist returning his bright smile, and hoping that they'd meet again. 

The following day, they sat there again for an hour or so and then Jack took him on a tour of the grounds - he knew them as well as anyone, even then, and he showed him the pool where he liked to swim. The head groundskeeper didn't mind as long as he dredge the leaves, he told him, then they moved on, amongst the lively shapes of the children's garden shrubs and on into the maze. Jack knew the way and waited for him at the centre and Lucas got there, laughing, having cheated most entirely: he had bits of leaf in his hair and dirt on his knees as he shimmied underneath the hedge, and Jack gave him a hand to help him up. 

For a moment, they stood too close, with Lucas' hand still grasping Jack's. For a moment, Jack's heart thudded loudly in his chest. Then they stepped apart, and went down to the lake to feed the swans. 

The next day, Lucas startled him in the gardens, pruning roses, and when Jack yelped as a thorn tore through his glove, Lucas took his wrist and eased the glove off for him. The thorn hadn't broken the skin but Lucas pressed his lips to the spot anyway. Lucas' tongue met his skin. Lucas' lips parted and, with his hand still firm around Jack's wrist, he sucked there at his fingertip. His tongue teased the pad of his finger, a swirl that sent a shameful thrill straight to another part of Jack, then he moved away. 

"All better," Lucas said, with a bright, charming smile. Then he sat and chattered as Jack replaced his glove and went on pruning, but the feeling wouldn't leave his head. 

The next day, Lucas looked at the sketch on his paper and said, "Draw me." Then he took off his shirt right then and there, and Jack did as he was told. The next day, Lucas passed him his paper and said, "Draw me." Then he took off all his clothes and lay down on the grass and Jack, with his heart in his mouth, did as he was told. 

There were four days like that, of increasing intimacies, where Jack's heart raced and they talked for hours, about Latin poetry, about love and excess, and all the things that home study with his parents reading books aloud had failed utterly to teach him. Lucas threw one arm around Jack's shoulders as they walked into town, to meet a couple of Lucas' friends from college who were staying at the inn. Lucas rested their foreheads together when they were the worse for wear for drink and went exploring in the woods, when they stood outside the folly. Lucas' mouth brushed his, just for a moment, before Jack balked and pulled away. He told him no, in no uncertain terms, because he found that he was terrified. He ended what they had before it had truly begun.

And two nights later, the last night, after more than a day filled with silence and burgeoning regret, he'd meant to find him and apologise and tell him that he understood, and he wanted the same things he did. He meant to kiss him, fully, to crush his mouth to his and feel the heat of him and let him know he wanted him. But when they reached the folly, when he went up the spiral stair, he heard voices. Lucas was in there with another man, another _Jack_ , the doctor's son who was shortly due for an apprenticeship somewhere in the south. He watched Lucas fuck him, Jack's trousers down around his knees and the fall of Lucas' unbuttoned out of place and his stomach turned but he couldn't leave them there. He watched them. He felt his own cock stiffen and he rubbed himself, red-faced, ashamed, until he soiled his trousers with his come. And, when the two of them were finished, then he left. He didn't need to see the way they kissed, or hear the earnest-seeming things that Lucas might say to this other Jack, just like he'd said to him. 

Jack avoided him for the next two days and, after that, Lucas left. When he went to the folly, that was when he found the letters; he took them with him, wishing that he didn't know that _Jack_ there on the paper, underlined, was Jack Gorham and not Jack Rivers. He read them stumbling, grimacing, reading the words - Lucas wanted this other fucking Jack to leave with him, to run away, and they'd live on their wits and Lucas' inheritance, because they had both those things in full abundance. No one had ever called Jack Rivers a wit, with his slow written words and his slow written figures. All Lucas had done was toy with him, like he'd go on to do so well with others.

Still, he'd kept the letters anyway, though he knew that they weren't his. And sometimes, he'd imagined going with him, and what their lives would have been. But eight years passed and each time Lucas had returned to Havensridge they'd seen each other only from a distance. Until now. 

That night, as the household was already preparing for the funeral, Jack went back to the folly. He'd ask Mr. Evers to help him write the letters seeking new employment, he thought, once they'd buried Viscount Lethton, and his references would be impeccable, but his thoughts of new employment came to a startling halt when he found the door ajar again. 

"You saw me with him?" Lucas asked. He gestured to the wall, by the window, where Jack had caught the two of them that night, and what he'd caught there in the sketch he'd kept for so long in the bottom of that box. 

"I was looking for you. I meant to apologise."

"Jack, I didn't know."

"It doesn't matter."

Lucas frowned. He shook his head, quite vehemently. "It does," he said. "For God's sake, Jack, do you really think the letters were for him?" He stepped closer. "They were meant for you. I thought you knew. I thought you'd made your choice." 

"And so he was...?"

"A moment's consolation for the loss of what might have been. Before my life became what it is now."

Jack had felt the racing of his heart inside his chest before, and the thud of his blood in his veins, the heat of his face and the flush of his skin. He'd felt Lucas' hands on him before then, too, and his lips, but as Lucas pulled him to him, as Lucas pressed his mouth to his and cupped his jaw, it was such a confluence of parts that they conspired to be entirely new. When they undressed each other, slowly, fingers shaking, laughter, smiles in the mid-morning sun through the windows, their skin lit up like jewels with the light of the stained glass, it was a pleasure that Jack hadn't known existed. Lucas wrapped his legs around Jack's waist and Jack pushed inside him, slowly, breathless, moaning. Lucas' cock grazed Jack's belly, rubbed there, almost maddening, as he moved, as he had him, as they both grasped and gasped and tensed until the finish. They wiped each other down and lay there, side by side. But a shadow fell and Jack, with one hand circling Lucas' wrist, frowned and looked away. 

"Are you going back to London?" he asked. 

"Well, the Season's finished," Lucas replied. "I'll be going back to Kent. Tawnybrook is rather nice this time of year." And, when Jack smiled tightly, he shook him by one shoulder and said, "Come with me. I'd much rather prefer we don't make the same mistake again." 

He couldn't, of course, for so many reasons, but the thought of it did tempt him. 

There were four days that followed. Long days, hot days, between the death of Robert, Viscount Lethton, and his funeral - long days that they spent together, swimming, pruning, talking, fucking, waiting for the summer to end while hoping it wouldn't. The funeral was held at St. Mary's Church in Lethton, according to his lordship's wish, and that night they sat on the roof of the folly in their suits and looked up at the stars, outside for once and not just the gold ones there inside. Afterwards, they put out the lamp and spent the night in Jack's bed together. Lucas snored, but Jack really didn't mind.

And then, of course, it was time for Lucas to depart. He had an estate down in Kent, quite vast from what Jack understood, with its own steward and butler, cook, groundskeepers. So many things were ending. 

The morning that he left, they stood together at the folly, by the door. Lucas kissed him, took his hands, smiled, and said, "You know, I still have that sketch you made when we first met. It's framed, on the wall of my private study." 

Jack chuckled. He could imagine that, the rake with the naked drawing of himself in pride of place, but the thought tugged at his heart as well as his humour. 

Then, in an unusual twist, Lucas' face turned solemn.

"You know, I'm thinking of building a folly," he said, rather like a question, or like an offer, and Jack held his hands a little tighter. He'd denied temptation once; this time, he wouldn't. This time, he couldn't. He would not make another mistake.

"Let me know when it's finished," he said. "I might know someone who's looking for something along those very lines." 

Lucas' smile was bright and wide and earnest, just as it had been all those years before. And, four months later, a new letter came for Jack to figure out, and speak, and put into the box he'd kept: the folly at Tawnybrook Manor was complete, and inside the vaulted ceiling had both sun and moon amongst the golden stars. 

Jack left Havensridge ten years ago. He's never returned, though Lucas still helps him write to Mr. Evers.

And things end, yes. But other things begin.


End file.
